So our (in the loosest terms) ambulance service is blaming "human error" for sending paramedics 50 miles off course for a teenager who had collapsed.

It was always going to be the outcome. Someone in South Central Ambulance's control room in Milton Keynes got confused between Grove in Oxfordshire and Grove in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. It is reasonable to assume that if the control room had been in Oxfordshire, such a blunder would be unlikely.

We don't wish to condemn our paramedics because, every hour of every day, they come to our aid. But this, plus the miscommunication which saw help delayed by almost an hour for a cyclist who died, must not be repeated.